Team Penske driver Josef Newgarden (No. 1 Hitachi Chevrolet) returns to defend not only his victory in the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, but also the NTT INDYCAR SERIES championship, his second in three years. He needs to win though in order to make that happen.

“I don’t think there’s a ton of pressure,” Newgarden said. “I’m just really proud of what we’ve come back from this year, some of the adversities we’ve had to work through. But as far as the approach, I mean, honestly for us, we don’t change our approach. I’ve never really changed my approach.

“When you do start to get yourself in a tough situation is when you start trying to compensate, or if you’re trying to play to a certain level or you’re trying to drive the car to a certain speed, that’s when you can overcomplicate things and create more issues than just trying to go out and maximize the potential of the car.

“If we have a fifth-place car on the weekend, you can only force so much. For me, it’s all about calculated risks, getting the most out of the weekend. For us, that needs to be a win. If it’s not there, I’m not going to take a sixth-place car and try to pass five guys in front of me. I’ll probably end up in the wall doing that. I don’t see the approach changing for us very much.”

Last year, Newgarden became the first driver since 2014 to use a victory in St. Petersburg as a springboard to the season title. He is looking to become the first series champion to repeat since Dario Franchitti won three in a row from 2009-11.

To wear both crowns again, the 30 year-old Nashville, Tenn., driver had to fend off strong challenges from as many as five former series champions this year, led by Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon (No. 9 PNC Bank Honda), a five-time series champion. Other past champions include four-time champion Sebastien Bourdais (No. 14 AJ Foyt Chevrolet), 2012 champion Ryan Hunter-Reay (No. 28 DHL Honda) of Andretti Autosport, 2014 champion Will Power (No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet) and 2016 champion Simon Pagenaud (No. 22 Menards Chevrolet).

“We have the same goals,” Newgarden said before the season. “We need to try to win the Indianapolis 500 as a team, same thing with the driver’s championship. It will go in that order.”

He didn’t win the Indy 500, but has been on a terror as of late to march a charge at another championship.

Newgarden won the second race at World Wide Technology Raceway. He was second in the next race at Mid-Ohio. Then, he was eighth. Meanwhile, Dixon looked pedestrian in finishing fifth (St. Louis) and a pair of 10th place runs in Mid-Ohio.

“I think you got to look to race two at Gateway, was kind of the final time it came back around to us,” said Newgarden on when he points to when this turnaround began. “This trend has thankfully gone the right way from there. It kind of ebbed and flowed. The first three races were just bad because Scott racked up so many points so quickly, then we kind of were ebbing and flowing for a little while. We’d have a good race, then a weird race. The points would go up and down.

“The point where the trend has reversed was Gateway race two. That’s what we’ve been working towards. We’re going to try to continue that trend through St. Pete. We need another really good weekend.”

That puts us to the present. Dixon led Newgarden by 72 points heading to the final three races of the season.

Then, things really took a turn.

Dixon and Newgarden were caught out from a Takuma Sato off in qualifying for their group for Race 1 on Thursday evening of Harvest Grand Prix qualifying. Newgarden, started second. Dixon 12th. Newgarden, led the most laps on Friday too and won by 14.2940-seconds. Dixon, finished ninth.

The points gap went from 72 to 40 in one race.

Then, it shrank eight more points with Newgarden finishing fourth and Dixon eighth. The gap is down to 32 with that being exactly how many points Newgarden made up in just one race on the first race of the IMS race weekend.